For those of you who have refinished /painted cabs with factory f

sis2twoOctober 3, 2012

I am really hoping to get some feedback on this one. As many of you know I am planning to have our upper and lower cabinets repainted in a few weeks in an antique white color. All of the doors will be replaced using Woodmode which is the maker of our cabinets.

The uppers will be taken out and professionally refinished. The lower boxes will be refinished on site and hand painted. We have soapstone on them so taking them out also is not an option nor is spraying them on site.

After some reading, I am concerned about the durability of the lowers.

Can I get some feedback from anyone who has refinished cabinets with a factory finish and what your experience has been? And what paint you used if you have had good results. Recently I was told about Muralo Ultra.

I would love to have all of my cabinets the same color, but would rather keep my green lowers if the bottoms are not going to be durable or if they are going to look very different with the techniques used. Thank you all so much. You have been very patient with me with all of my questions..

So let me see if I have this correct, woodmode is going to send you all new doors drawer heads and moldings presumable in white. Than you are going to have someone local finish the uppers in there shop and the lowers in your house.
If that is in fact the case and the guy who is doing it is good and if he is spraying woodmodes material you should be ok. If he is brush applying youÃ¯Â¿Â½re in trouble as there will be a distinct difference between that and the new doors.

rggrrbrg- the upper cabinet boxes will be sprayed with paint from Woodmode in the antique white color and all new doors and drawer fronts will come directly from Woodmode. The lower frames will be finished on site. The paint will be color matched and the lower frames brush painted. Hope this makes sense. All of the doors and drawer fronts will be consistent.

I have factory finished painted cabinets and have been very happy with the finish. I wipe them often as they are creamy white and they have held up very well.
Because I live in Ca I especially did not want an onsite finish.

I''ve also used Fine Paints of Europe for my mom' s remodel. Having a fine painter is essential, but that is a topic for another forum. The cabinets are white, and still look great after 8 years. Almost all family holidays are held in her kitchen, so lots of use. We were able at that time to get oil based paint in small cans.
Living in California, environmental concerns outweigh great paint jobs, however, as oil based paints will do a better finish IMO, but are hard to come by now.
If you live elsewhere, it may be available to you, as some retailers can color match, which we have done for house painting in the past.

Brushing or rolling on the paint will NOT have the same sheen and look as sprayed on paint. However, if you have full overlay cabinets, the only time that you will even see the frames is with the doors open, so your comfort level with that is a judgement call. However, your painter should be perfectly comfortable using an HVLP spray gun on site. It has very little overspray, and you'd only need to mask off the counters and adjacent walls and turn off anything that moves air like ceiling fans or AC's. The plastic at the entrances is more to keep out people and keep in the bit of fumes than it is to prevent garbage in the finish. It's not a big deal to do HVLP, and it's what I would expect from a pro rather than a brush job. For the uppers too. I wouldn't spend the extra money on removing them for shop spraying if the room is plasticed off properly to do the lowers. Leave all of the boxes in place and just move the appliances out of the room for a temp kitchen, and make the whole kitchen a spray booth. If he doesn't own a portable air compressor, then it's time to invest in one!